the afterlife

Would you like to believe in an afterlife? Which part of your current life would you like to see continued? Of course, a person will answer he or she wants ego consciousness to continue. I want my ego to last for eternity. What exactly is ego? It’s a heap of transient characteristics, occurring in a loose pattern, or personality. Which part of your personality would you like to continue for eternity? Without a body, how will one feel good?  Do you think your mind could exist without a body? What would be the focal point of a disembodied mind? Ok, enough of this silly chatter.

Even though ego is obviously empty, I live as though ego is very important. If I really had gotten over ego, there would be no need to get angry or depressed. Each time I get upset, it’s like a statement of belief in myself. Feelings and thoughts don’t last. One moves along an endless sequence of sensation through space and time.

So if ego and self are empty, or impermanent, what continues from moment to moment? Without continuity, there would be no sequence. Sequence can only exist with before and after. The present only exists because of past and future. Something exists, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing. There would be no language. A highly structured world of language and tradition exists. The form appears empty, but emptiness only occurs through form.


One’s existence within the populated, structured world is transparent, impermanent, dreamlike. Each instant fades into memory or is forgotten. Very little of the here and now is even perceived, let alone remembered. One follows a trail of instants, selected, consciously or unconsciously, from an infinite ground of happening.